


It's My Birthday and I'll Write What I Want To

by b00mgh



Category: Of Wind and Shadows, South Park
Genre: Butters can be a badass too, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Kessler is a Dad, M/M, Naomi can be a badass too, Sick Fic, mostly hurt because fuck it, tweek and craig are Good Boyfriends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-27
Updated: 2018-09-27
Packaged: 2019-07-18 04:16:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16110623
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/b00mgh/pseuds/b00mgh
Summary: Two fics because I felt like writing them on my birthday. Sue me.First one is from the book /The One Who Eats Monsters/ by Casey Matthews (kinda new, doesn't have it's own tag yet, but its wlw and wonderful go read it right now you will not regret I promise) and is something like a sickfic and Naomi being her own badass and keeping her demonic entity girlfriend out of harm's way.The second one is South Park, standard shit, Kenny and Butters help each other beat the living fuck outta some homophobes.Each fic is a different chapter, so if you only wanna read one just jump to that chapter. Have fun and thanks for visiting.





	1. Chapter 1

Ryn and Naomi

Poison was what did it, loosed from a spore as opposed to a spine. Not Saxby, an imitator. A younger asura with a younger crush and a younger innovative spirit. 

Either way, there Ryn was, right on time for her sleepover with Naomi, and shivering for what could be, at worst, the sixth time in her whole existence. 

Naomi’s father opened the door. “Hey, kiddo.” He knew that Ryn hated being called that, but Naomi said it was his personal way of showing closeness, the teasing. “You look pale. Finally getting tired after six months of my daughter dragging you into things?” 

It was a test, and tonight especially it barbed Ryn’s tongue. “No,” and she didn’t elaborate. Too tired to find the words to tell him that, similarly to him but with an altogether different machination, she would never tire of Naomi Bradford. Six months was a blink of an eye and even eternity wouldn’t suffice. 

Tom Bradford chuckled, just as Naomi bounded down the stairs and laughed at how well they were getting along. Ryn didn’t bare her teeth or grumble at the joke like she normally would, just shuddered at the early winter cold. With her head cocked to the side like that, Naomi looked like O’Rourke on a particularly intriguing black binder case– but much prettier. 

“You feeling okay, Ryn?” A warm hand pressed to Ryn’s cheek, and she leaned into the touch a little. “I’ll take the nearly falling asleep at the door as a ‘no.’ Let’s head upstairs, yeah?” That was Naomi’s Soft Voice, and it bypassed a deva’s tired limbs as easily as it did the itching trigger finger of a gunman at point blank range. 

“We’ll order pizza tonight,” Naomi might as well be looking at a planner, the way she says it all, “we can make the tacos next Friday.” 

“What’s pizza? I like tacos.” They always made the food when Ryn came for dinner nights, and it made her feel more inclined to eat it. If she hadn’t hunted it, at least she had prepared it prettily. 

Rolling her eyes with more humor than annoyance, Naomi reminded her “You’ve never had tacos, and pizza is just as good. Here, lay down, love.” Ryn’s brain perked up at the sound of her favorite of Naomi’s many endearments. She could never quite figure out how to use them effectively herself, but they sounded sweeter than any divine praise when spoken through Naomi’s lips. She did as asked. 

“Why?”

“You’re as pale as a ghost–”

“Ghosts aren’t pale. They inhabit any human or object they choose.”

“And you’re skin is cold and clammy. You’re sick.”

“Deva do not get sick.”

“Well, you’re special. Maybe it’s because you’ve been hanging around me too much?” Naomi mused, and a nauseating smell mixed with her citrus and rain. She tried to laugh it off. “Sharing too much breath with a mortal?”

“No.” It was a thunder crack of a word, and Ryn sat full up with the effort of saying it. “It was an asura. A young one. Trying his luck with fungus and poison.”

Naomi’s brow stitched together at the middle and her eyes shone a little brighter, her mouth pulled into a taut line. Ryn, after dissecting Naomi’s faces and practicing with Ms. Cross, could identify this emotion: concern. “I’d say he got pretty lucky,” Naomi whispered, and her voice rang with it. Naomi knew better than to try and chastise Ryn for fighting, to try and rein her in, because she’s figured out that if she doesn’t let Ryn hunt something evil then she will snap a man’s wrist for approaching too suddenly and then feel remorse that she can’t put words to for days.  _ I was protecting,  _ Ryn would say.  _ I get nervous, _ Ryn wouldn’t say. 

But now was no time for worrying over what food was for dinner or whether or not Ryn’s nighttime hunting was technically morally correct, because a sweat had begun to give her a glow under the ceiling lights in Naomi’s bedroom, her glasses had fallen by the wayside to expose a face grimacing in exhausted pain, her body had gone from 90 degrees to something over 110 in less than three minutes. The sickness wasn’t human, but then again neither was Ryn. 

“Ryn? Sweetheart? You’re scaring me.” Even without opening her eyes against the screaming ceiling bulbs and the wailing moonlight, Ryn could feel Naomi’s  _ concern _ like a taut wire wrapped around both their hearts.

“Sorry,” Ryn panted, “I will be more–” her breath hitched on the next syllable, “careful.” Ever since the double date, ever since leaving Naomi heartbroken and terrified in the snow, Ryn had kept herself on a short leash. If she ever felt Naomi’s fear, the first person’s behavior to be examined– in the absence of any asura or other blatant threats– was herself.

“No, no,” Ryn could hear the rising heart rate that accompanied Naomi’s fear, and it pounded in her skull like a snake’s tail bashing her into a wall, “I’m not scared of you, I’m scared for you. You need a doctor.”

Ryn hissed out a few short breaths, trying to bank on how well Naomi had always seen through her actions to the deeper meanings. No doctors. No people. Just Naomi. Maybe Detective Kessler, if Naomi had Girl Scouts the next day. 

“Girls, how’s it going in here?” Tom Bradford called in playfully. The father didn’t mind if the girls were left to themselves–  _ what’s going to happen, huh?  _ he had joked once,  _ someone going to get pregnant? _ – but he often checked on them anyway–  _ non-negotiable _ . 

Torn between what she knew would be the right call for anyone else and what she could tell was what Ryn wanted, Naomi schooled her voice into something that could pass for less frazzled and replied “We’re fine, dad. Don’t you have that committee agenda to set up? Carol can’t run your career for you.” Her dad muttered something about  _ teenagers _ that made him chuckle to himself and then strode confident and unworried to his study down the hall. 

Then Naomi was right back to her one-track mind, and she hovered anxiously next to Ryn, who was beginning to writhe uncomfortably in the sheets. Not in the way that Denise would joke about, but with agony carved into the dark and tired lines under her eyes and clenched teeth set in her jaw. “Ryn, what’s wrong? What hurts?” 

“Lights,” The snow drifting down outside forced a chilled tremor out of Ryn, just as the ear-shattering lights stabbed themselves into her head.

They were off in an instant, despite Naomi’s clinging fear of the deep shadow and it’s blurred edges. She reasoned with herself that Ryn was by far the most terrifying thing she could encounter, in dark or light, and that she could get under the covers with her to ease Ryn’s shivers of cold and her own shivers of fear. It worked, sort of. Naomi was still scared, but less of the dark and more of the barefaced suffering Ryn endured next to her. Ryn was still cold, but burrowing into Naomi’s arms like a rabbit into a nest was a comfort on levels beyond the physical. Between Ryn’s gratuitous body heat and the thick comforter keeping it trapped between them, the first of the season’s drops to below freezing temperatures went entirely unnoticed within the Bradford home. 

 

Ryn never dreamt, save for when she rested next to Naomi– and it was a thrill that had her sleeping over every new moon. In all the centuries she had done many things, but dreams were still novel. 

This one was a picturesque picture. A breakfast table. Ms. Cross and Detective Kessler laughing at each other, warm rose colors pushing through their melanin. Tom Bradford freezing Denise with a disapproving, but fond glare that she casually ignored. Naomi’s hand held in hers with that smile, the most real one she had, outshining the nebula that had birthed the planet she existed on. 

And a whimsical chant. “Ryn. Erynis. The Implacable One. Adrasteia. Nemesis. Lailah.” That was not Naomi’s voice. It was Beat, the one who had poisoned her, tenor tones laced with arsenic as toxic as the spores he had softly, almost sweetly, blown her way. “Ryn. Erynis.” She had to wake up, felt the impulse sing and singe in her body. “The Implacable One.” But no movement was granted. Her body was stiff and heavy with poisoned illness. “Adrasteia.” Naomi. Naomi. “Lailah.” Naomi. Naomi. Naomi.

 

He’d come in through the window, and had Naomi been less accustomed to straining her ears for Ryn’s silent steps on the sill, she’d have missed him until it was too late. As she sat, spine on fire with anxiety and mind sharp with bypassed prey-fear, she saw him rifling through a small backpack he’d brought with him. 

“Leave,” she tried. It was a long shot– an asura, scared of a mortal? To try was her only option. If Ryn had been slower to respond than her, then she wasn’t getting up anytime soon. She still shivered under the covers, whining in fear while her divine eyes fought helplessly to open. 

“Ryn. Erynis. The Implacable One. Adrasteia. Lailah. Killer of my beloved.” Sharp, sugar brown eyes snapped to pin Naomi in place. “I have nothing for you, human. Leave my prey and I leave you be.”

Summoned by Naomi’s call into her memories, every mention of what killed, wounded, or deterred an asura spilled into her mind– memories of the things Ryn didn’t realize she had been teaching. They hate pain. Ryn’s claws kill them. They were born of the sins that layered so thick that one could no longer see them as anything thinner than bone and flesh. Here goes nothing.

“If you leave now, you can still run,” Naomi reminded him, “run far and run fast, and I might even persuade her to maintain a mutual ignorance with you. You stay away, so do we.”

No budging. “This is personal. She killed him. She killed Saxby. I loved him.”

“And I can’t say I blame her. He started it.” 

Thoughtless, stupid thing to say– given the circumstances– but it was sailing through the air before she could think about it. Ryn was rubbing off on her. 

The thing that Naomi did not know as Beat gave a high noise in the back of his throat, and it spoke of offense taken. “Don’t talk about him like that,  _ don’t talk about him like that _ .” He dove forward, and the adrenaline that everyone assumed Ryn used to pull off her vicious feats gave Naomi the edge she needed to drag herself and her girlfriend off of the bed and away from the clobbering fists aimed at them. One of his hands got caught in a spring in her bed, and Naomi’s thoughts flew in front of her face before one grabbed her by the ears and she listened to it. It was dumb and reckless, but it was what she had. 

He was trying to yank his hand out of the spring and fluff, and Naomi used the opportunity to kick him in the side, winding him, and that opened him enough for her to bring both hands down on his head. She wished Mark had taught her more for these days when he wasn’t around, but this is what she had. Another blow to the jaw, another, another, kept going until he stopped rebounding from them so fast. Go for the back of the knee, again, until his legs crumple. Naomi can’t say she enjoys it, but she feels the primordial, pure, white-hot incinerator of rage, of protection. Ryn was rubbing off on her. When the asura’s hollow sagged, hand still trapped in the spring, against the bed, Naomi lunged for the horse-riding bridle hanging on her wall next to a third-place trophy and she knotted it around his hands where they were stuck– echoes of the camping trip and Patrick’s hateful eyes stammering her hands– then she used a shoelace from her running sneakers for the legs– and there was the rage of seeing Patrick’s hands on Denise’s throat– and she used the other shoelace to tie the two knots together at an uncomfortable looking angle. She hoped he’s uncomfortable, hoped he’s in pain, hoped he regretted every coming to her home looking to hurt Ryn. There was a passing temptation to drag a screaming apology out of him. 

“Everything okay?” Naomi’s dad pushed the door open, unable to adjust his eyes entirely to the dark. “I heard someone fall.”

It came out like silk from a spider: “I accidentally kicked Ryn off the bed,” Naomi lied. When did she get the talent for it? That was Denise’s influence. It helped though, the last thing she wanted was her father flipping his lid and calling the police on a threat that they couldn’t hope to handle with mortal means. 

“Okay, well I’ve got to go grab a briefing from the office real quick, won’t be an hour.” And he was shutting the door behind him and starting the car. 

Naomi’s mind still raced on the more current problem. Who knew about these types of things? Who could do something about it? 

Two names: Kessler and O’Rourke. They knew Ryn, and they knew law enforcement. Between the three of them, something would surely be done about this asura. She dialed the former on Ryn’s phone because neither of them had the contact info of the latter. 

“Ryn, how’s it going?”

“Detective Kessler?”

“Naomi? What happened to Ryn?”

“She’s sick–”

“ _ Sick _ ? How does an ancient preternatural entity get  _ sick _ ?”

“Poison–”

“ _ POISON!?” _

“Yes, listen, there’s an asura here, at my house, and Ryn won’t wake up and I tied it up with a horse bridle and shoelaces but I am not that confident in their integrity against this thing. Can you come pick him up and put him… somewhere. Solitary confinement? Is that a possibility?”

Kessler was breathing heavily on the other side of the receiver, keys jangled and a door slammed. “On my way. Is your dad there? Put him on the phone.”

“He’s out. Just left a minute ago.”

“And Fridays are Mark’s days off, right? That’s what Ryn told me last week at dinner. Fuck. How is she?”

“Sleeping,” Naomi’s eyes darted between the predator and the prey of the evening, “and not well.”

“I’m pulling into your neighborhood.” Nobody talked about how fast you have to fly over the empty eleven p.m. roads to cross a ten-minute drive in less than half the time. 

Beat was tugging at the spring that had captured his hand, making that high-pitched sound in his throat when he noticed the binds on his hands. Naomi kicked his head again, breath hitching in hiccuping sobs, and went to the other side of the bed to gather Ryn in her arms. There was a difference in frequency between their shivers; both were warm with exertion or fever. 

Kessler nearly kicked down the door but managed to just slam it open, throwing the light switch back on as he entered– drawing a pained moan from Ryn, who tucked her head into Naomi’s lap to hide her eyes. To be honest, Kessler was impressed at Naomi, he’d had his reservations about how well she could handle herself without Ryn, but this was clearly her work because Ryn’s would have been bloodier. There was also the matter of Beat’s decaying hollow: with the lights on, anyone could see that his jaw was rotting off and his fingers were cancerously overgrown. Nobody could see why: Ryn had sliced the asura nearly in half with her claws during their first altercation, even if he could escape this hollow, each successor would last less and less until finally he would be too fragile to possess anyone, and he would finally disintegrate. 

“ _Holy_ _shi_ –” Kessler left the rotting hollow there for a moment to assess the girls. That thing could wait, tied up and in pain, he wanted to be sure they were all right first. “Naomi, you okay?” A tense nod cut through the tears she was trying to contain. “And Ryn? Still alive?” It was half a joke– she had said herself that she didn’t die– but half an actual question– he had fringes of memories where he’d cut her out of barbed wire and a plastic trash bag in the desert, of digging her out of concrete and brick, she hadn’t died either time but he had to carry her.

“She hates the lights,” Naomi told him with chattering teeth, “and she’s got a fever, a bad one. She won’t wake up.” Her voice broke like a windowpane and sobs poured out like snow through the leftover hole. 

“Okay, it’s okay, she’s never died before, I don’t see why she’d start now.” His hand went to Ryn’s forehead and came back like he’d waved it over a stove, he resisted the urge to dial for an ambulance. She hated doctors and there wasn’t anything they could do for her anyway. “First things first,” and he took about ten minutes dragging a hissing, cursing, decomposing Beat out of the room, down the stairs, into the back seat of the patrol car he shared with O’Rourke– who he’d need to brief on this or he’d never hear the end of it. On the way back through the house, he retrieved what Beat had dropped, a jaw and a finger and one very dried out piece of scalp, and put them in a disposable grocery bag from under the kitchen sink. Back in Naomi’s room, the lights were back off, the window was locked, and Ryn and Naomi were still in the corner on the floor, huddled together in a thick comforter. 

Ryn’s glasses were off, and she peered at Naomi through heavy-lidded eyes while Naomi stroked her hair. “Not totally awake yet,” Naomi explained when she heard Kessler come back through the door, “but she opened her eyes for me when I asked her to.”

“It’s good she can.” Ryn was breathing like she’d stopped a freight train with her bare hands– except she could probably do that without breaking a sweat as she had, so maybe something closer to a commercial jet. “The only thing for her is to sleep it off.” 

“Okay.” Naomi breathed. She had been holding it inside. “Okay. I’ve got her until then. You can go back home– sorry for bothering you.” 

Kessler laughed, and it was a soft sound. “No, thank you for calling me.” He wanted to take Ryn home with him, where he could make sure she slept alright and keep an eye out for anything bad with a gun in his hand and make her soup, but he doubted anyone could extricate her hand from where it was bunched in Naomi’s sweater. Nobody was hurt and he had one attempted murderer to put behind bars. He’d get testimonies the next day when O’Rourke was with him, or maybe this would all somehow disappear in smudged ink and water-damaged evidence like all the cases where the supernatural bared their fangs. 

For the moment, he told Naomi he’d call in the morning to check in, and he left Ryn and Naomi huddled and shivering in the corner together, and he drove the deranged man to the station lockup, and he dealt with all the weird questions he was asked that none of them would remember much of the next morning.   
  


 


	2. Chapter 2

Butters and Kenny

It was entirely common for Butters to walk Kenny home, or vice versa– it gave them both a reason to be home less. So even though Kenny would be scoffed at in Butter’s gated community and Butters would get snide comments and low whistles in Kenny’s trailer park, they walked each other home and took solace in the fact that none of these people would likely be bold enough to do in public what their parents did in the kitchen.

Today it was Butters walking Kenny home, and it was dusk because they’d spent the daylight sitting by a snow-swollen creek and unsuccessfully catching spring fish with sticks. Cold enough for thick jackets, warm enough to take them off and get a little closer. Not at school because some kids picked a fight with Kenny during off-campus lunch, and he just didn’t have the energy today to show them that being a fag doesn’t mean he won’t deck you flat on your ass and keep the hits coming until you’re bleeding in six different places. His dad took it too far day before yesterday, and Kenny wheezes a little when he breathes too deep, or at all.

Butters doesn’t try to joke much on account of that, but he’ll list the different things he thinks are beautiful about this town. The lake. The sky in the winter. New snow, or the melty stuff too. Kenny McCormick. Spring flowers. How clear the moon shines sometimes. Kenny McCormick. Okay, Kenny laughed anyway, but only a little, so it didn’t hurt him too bad. They banged on the windows to Tweak Bros Coffee as they passed, and Craig leaned back just far enough from Tweek’s face to not bump their noses as Tweek swung his head around in paranoid panic, only to see them and tell them to go fuck themselves if they’re gonna do that every day, but he got over it quick in favor of pulling Craig further into his lap. Nobody goes into the shop, or even hangs around this part of town, at dusk. Risky. Tweek always works that shift on purpose though because it gives him and Craig a good two or three hours of alone time. Maybe not OSHA approved, but who gives a shit it’s South Park, Colorado in the middle of Bumblefuck, Nowhere.

Kenny tells Butters that, when he turns 18, they’re going to go on a one-way road trip, and there’s going to be so much beautiful shit, Butters’ll forget there was anything for him in South Park. Butters is an optimist though, a stupid little optimist, and says there’s stuff everywhere for someone, and tons of people probably love South Park. Kenny calls him a dumbass. Butters knows it’s affectionate underneath the parka.

Not everyone knows it’s affection though– you know, like the squad of absolute fuckbois from earlier in the day who know which way Kenny walks home and have been staked out a half a block from Tweak Bros Coffee for a few hours now (what can I say? There isn’t much to do in Bumblefuck, Nowhere, and in their defense they’ve been doing some online gambling on their phones in the meantime). They see this and laugh because it makes them feel good when they think that they have these other boys under their thumb with their doubled numbers, and they drag Kenny into an alleyway with intent, not to kill, but to maim or severely injure. And oh, yeah, sure, they get a good one on his face before anyone can blink, but then by the time the next blink has happened, Kenny has leaned against the wall and used the momentum to kick out his legs and plant two guys into the disgusting slushy asphalt. Another blink and he’s put so much force behind his fist that he’s pinned the third guy against a wall and blink punch blink punch blink punch punch blink. That guy goes down and he doesn’t get back up without assistance at the end of things. But the whole four blinks it took to do that give the fourth and final asshat the time to grab at Kenny from behind and drag him backwards, which gives asshats 1 and 2 time to stand up and at the same time that Kenny slams his head back to sandwich asshat 4 between a rock and a hard place that puts him down and out with what everyone later discovers to be a moderate concussion, asshat 2 puts a fist like a cattle prod between Kenny’s fourth and fifth ribs. There’s a crack. Kenny vomits the pain away and passes out from it. The vomit mostly just lands on asshat 2.

Now keep in mind that this all took about two minutes, and to Butters, this two minutes felt like one singular painful blink, except he couldn’t even bear to close his eyes. He’d never actually seen any of Kenny’s fights– not in all the two years they’ve been dating, not in all the nine months where he’s convinced Kenny to actually tell him when they happen– and this virgin voyeurism, of a kind, leaves him with two thoughts that are solid as flesh and just as hot-blooded. The first: it’s by far one of the most beautiful things he’s ever seen in South Park, and if Kenny weren’t hurt doing it he would like to see it more often. The second: these absolute pigfucker pieces of shit wastes of space hurt Kenny McCormick, and Butters has had a promise to himself for nine months about what he would do if he ever saw that in front of his eyes.

There’s no roar of fury, no forewarning. Butters gets low and swipes a leg under asshat 2, the closer one, and he goes down like an off-guard brick chimney. Stomps on a hand, and stands on his chest before using it as a springboard to launch himself at asshat 1 and hold his throat in the crook of his forearm until he stops flailing and starts falling. Asshat 2 isn’t necessarily all the way down, but he sure isn’t getting up. It’s thirty seconds and it’s adrenaline and it’s beginner’s luck and it’s brutal anyway. Butters is small, and the trainer at the gym he found eight months ago told him two things about that: use it to his advantage, and that he can’t afford to do anything less than go for vitals in a situation like this one. A crotch shot is both literally and metaphorically below the belt, but if someone twice your size is earnestly trying to hurt you then you take the shot anyway.

Kenny is up again. Not up to fighting but up. Wheezing and holding his middle but up. He hadn’t seen any of that, hadn’t seen it coming either, but he’d heard the foot-to-ankle thump and the head-to-ground crack and the chest-to-back jump and the arm-to-throat cough and the knees-chest-head slump. He’d feared the worst, and when Butters leaned over him and unzipped his jacket to help him get air he assumed for a second that they had gone too far and killed Butters and his ghost was watching over him, but ghosts can’t remove parkas.

“Ken, do we need a hospital?”

“Did they–… hurt–… you?”

“No. Worse. They hurt you.”

Even a chuckle would be too much then, but Kenny smiled wryly, ran a gravel-studded hand over Butter’s baby-soft one– although maybe there were more calluses than Kenny had initially thought.

“Well, gosh, nothing a doctor can really do for bruised ribs,” Butters mused, “not even if they were broken. Except give you something for the pain, but we can get those from Tweek.” Everyone knew by then what Tweek’s parents were putting in that coffee before they were busted, and Tweek’s closest friends knew that he still had some tucked underneath the loose tile in the guest bathroom. Meth, in small doses, is a great pain reliever.

“Okay, com’ere, Ken,” and Kenny was shuffled awkwardly over Butter’s shoulder, “let’s see if we can sit down with Tweek and Craig for a few minutes while you catch your breath.” They walked at a staggered pace, and the only thing stopping Kenny’s pride from telling his boyfriend that he could walk on his own was the fact that he could hardly keep the black spots corralled within his peripheral vision as it is. He’d fall, and Butters would catch him, and that’d slows things down further. He leaned on him, open parka feeling like all the vulnerability he’s shown in two years presented as one gaping wound. Every once in a while, when Butters shifted the way they were pressed together in the middle, the parka stuck and showed a swatch of skin crosshatched with scars. Step by step by step by step for less than a block and they were both sweating when the bell tinkled at their entry to Tweak Bros Coffee.

Tweak knew it was them, because nobody else came in there at that time ever, and he had a stuttering slew of swears for them, but he never got to say them because when he pulled back and Craig, who was the one facing them, opened his eyes and said “What the fuck” in as concerned a way as anyone could say that, and as concerned a way as Craig ever sounded. This prompted Tweak to rapidfire switch from annoyed to panicked, and he was hyperventilating before Craig was off his lap. Oxytocin and dopamine never were his strong suits.

“ _What the shit!?_ ” he shrieks.

“Babe, calm down.”

“ _They’re dead!!_ ”

“I’m sure as fuck not dead, dumbass.”

“Tweak, babe, deep breaths. Count ‘em with me. Ready? One, two, three, four, five six, seven, eight, nine, ten.”

“Can we sit down for a minute before we go home?”

“Oh, yeah, sure, dude. Maybe clean yourselves up in the bathroom. You both look like shit.”

“Aw, don’t be mean, Craig, they didn’t even touch me!”

“Then is that their blood?”

“Where?”

Craig pointed, and Butters’ ears went red. That very likely was someone else’s blood, because he was _not_ stabbed, that much he was certain of.

“Anyone got an extra jacket?”

 

Butters just ended up taking off his, and Tweek gave him some hydrogen peroxide he had a bottle of in the first aid kit in the bathroom to soak off the blood. It was warm enough inside the shop that they all had their jackets off– and once Craig put his shirt back on they were all just in t-shirts like it was late spring instead of the first day and a half of it. Kenny asked Tweek about the meth, and Tweek says can he wait until tomorrow at school, and Kenny says sure yeah and Butters says he’s lying and Craig says he’ll run and grab it real quick and he kisses Tweek’s fluffy hair and shoots a worried glance at Kenny’s stammering breathing as he lets the door swing shut behind him and he rides off on his motorcycle. The walk takes 9 minutes if you’re slow, and Craig’ll be back in half that time because he likes to go fast. Tweek asks what started the fight, Kenny says he doesn’t want to know, Tweek knows what that means and tears well in his eyes. When you’ve been out for so long, open about it for so long, and you’ve got parents that give a heck of a lot more than a shit about you, bullies tend to be wary of dragging you into an alleyway and beating you senseless.

“Are those the same guys that always go after you?” Butters asks Kenny.

“Yeah.”

“Good.” His tone is the only sweet thing about him for just a blink of an eye as he says “If they fuck with you again, at least they’ll know I’m coming from behind with a fucking baseball bat.”

“Aw, Butters, you cursed!” Kenny cooed playfully. He wasn’t making light of this, he was snapping Butters out of it. Professor Chaos had been a child’s dream, but that dream of hurting people came from somewhere, and every once in a while you could see it in Butters’ doe eyes and it wasn’t a fun thing to see. Every once in a while Kenny got the urge to burn Butters’ house down with just his parents inside.

“Shucks, I did,” Butters laughed.


End file.
